


you're on my mind (more than you know)

by veterization



Series: fluff verse [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Common Cold, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Sick Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 20:45:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6823480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is sick with a cold. Peter sticks around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're on my mind (more than you know)

**Author's Note:**

> So a little while ago me and Ro had an email exchange where we were listing the fluffiest stuff we could imagine Peter and Stiles doing while still staying in character, anything ranging from assigning each other dorky ringtones to annoying each other with cheeky pet names to protecting each other to the ends of the earth. SO, I was inspired.
> 
> This here is the first installment in my Peter/Stiles fluff verse, a collection I plan to sporadically update with 10k-30k oneshots whenever I feel like writing these two handling a nauseatingly adorable situation. I've already started writing other bits for this verse too, and I plan on covering things like jealousy and commitment and coming out to loved ones, etc, etc. The kind of cavity-inducing shit that we all crave now and again. The plan is to have each work be able to stand alone, but reference its predecessors here and there and always share the same backstory. This one here is a short but sweet piece for everybody's favorite trope: somebody is sick and cranky and needs taking care of.

"Really. I'm fine. This is unnecessary," Stiles says.

"I'm not asking. I'm telling." Demanding, really. "Now shut up and let me in."

“I need you to fuck off,” Stiles says slowly.

“Listen here,” Peter begins, but right as he’s about to say _I’m here out of the selfless goodness of my heart_ , Stiles closes the door.

As if that will stop him. Peter breaks his way in without a problem, because Stiles, a rookie, has left the windows unlocked. Peter rolls in through his bedroom, dusts off his pants, and strolls into the living room undaunted, where Stiles is currently wrapped up in what seems to be two hundred blankets.

“I’m here to help, you ungrateful little bastard,” Peter says haughtily. Stiles catches sight of him, groans, and falls down onto his couch with the dramatic flair of a character from Hamlet.

“Get out of here,” Stiles grumbles. “I can take care of myself. It’s just a cold.”

Before him, Stiles manages to blubber, sniff, and wheeze all at once. Peter both looks and tries not to look at the slime escaping Stiles’ nose like a slow-moving slug. He’s dressed like a homeless man wearing rags and looks the least attractive Peter has ever seen him. He probably ought to take this as an alarm bell and turn back.

But then, what kind of person would that make him, exactly? Everybody’s always saying he’s _horrible_ and _self-absorbed_ and _repugnant_ , and Peter highly doubts anybody will be able to continue saying so if Peter spends an entire day with Stiles, sick and whiny, without murdering a passerby. He’ll be like Mother Theresa.

It had all started about four hours ago, when Peter received a rather panicked text message from Scott telling him that Stiles was sick, green things were coming out of his nose, and for the sake of their relationship, Peter should be advised to keep his distance for the next few days unless he wants to send an Edible Arrangement his way just to make it clear that he still cares. Peter stared at the message for a while, not sure what to make of it considering both of them didn't exactly stand the risk of catching whatever unfortunate bug was plaguing Stiles' sinuses, only to realize that this wasn't about germs at all. This was about Stiles' rapid decline in friendliness, mood, and general manners when he fell ill.

If Peter didn't love a challenge so much, he probably would've heeded the warning.

“Here,” Peter says, brandishing the gifts he’s brought. “I have presents.”

Stiles gets off the couch, face critical at best, and takes the bag Peter’s holding out to him. He rifles through it like a security officer on bag check, all furrowed eyebrows and a downturned mouth, and he doesn’t seem all too pleased when he finishes his examination.

"This is the wrong type of NyQuil," Stiles says. His voice has a new, lovely nasal quality to it right now that Peter is not loving. "And these are the cheap scratchy tissues. You seriously couldn't spend two more dollars for your dying boyfriend?"

"You're not dying," Peter dismisses. "And the NyQuil will work."

"In knocking me out, yeah," Stiles grumbles. Peter then realizes that what he had assumed were multiple blankets is actually a giant ratty bathrobe Peter didn't even know Stiles owned, making him look frighteningly like an undead old man ready to yell at the pigeons on his lawn from his window.

“You’re in a lovely mood, aren’t you?” Peter says dryly, snatching the bag back.

“This is me,” Stiles says, throwing his arms out, “at my worst. If you can’t handle it, there’s the door. Or maybe you want to crawl back out the window.”

“You know, there’s no reason to be so _rude_.”

“Get out!” Stiles yells.

Stiles then settles back on the couch, doing a marvelous job of ignoring Peter after that. Peter wonders, only for a moment, if this is not the type of challenge he’s at all primed for, and if he ought to go back home and surrender, but even _thinking_ the word defeat when it comes to something as trivial as a few germs feels disgraceful. He’s been through death and resurrection and comas and arson, he can handle _this_.

\--

So Peter goes back to the supermarket. He calls Derek to vent while he does, which feels like a new low.

“He’s a wheezing, sniffling, bacteria-infested monster,” Peter says while he stares hard at the wall of NyQuil and wonders why NyQuil needs to have three thousand different types of NyQuil. Morning. Night. Afternoon. Mid-morning. Sinus. Severe. Mild. Cold and flu. This feels like a nasty trick, like this lures uninformed people into buying everything because they just can’t narrow it down. “It’s a nightmare.”

“You could always leave,” Derek suggests.

“Really? That’s your best advice?”

“That’s not my best advice. It’s just the advice I assumed you were looking for.”

“It isn’t,” Peter snaps. He picks up another box. What had Stiles said? The blue lid? The purple lid? The red lid? “And I’m not even looking for advice.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“To vent!” Peter shouts, one second away from giving in and buying every box of NyQuil in the store. "I'm not specialized in colds. I don't know how to treat them."

"Right. Your specialty is patching up wounds inflicted by arrows and swords other sharp objects," Derek deadpans, and he's not exactly wrong. Peter's very comfortable with blood, not so much with phlegm. "Just ask an employee what's best."

"As if they know. They get paid minimum wage to show people where the shampoo aisle is."

"Peter. Just ask."

Peter then spends the next five minutes continuing to rant and complain only to realize that Derek hung up long ago, reminding Peter to either a) revert permanently back to a landline with a working dial tone or b) stop calling Derek altogether. The bottom line here is that if he's ever in the Cash Cab, Derek isn't going to be his mobile shout out.

The annoying part is that he ends up taking Derek's advice and gathers more than three employees together for a small persuasive seminar on what medicines really are the greatest and fastest as far as trampling colds go. Peter was right—they really didn’t seem to be medically qualified on the topic, more confused than anything else—and he’s not sure he comes away any more informed. Considering that he has an extremely fussy boy waiting for him who doesn’t have a problem shooting out unfiltered opinions, Peter is not pleased with the chances he’s being forced to take with the merchandise here.

When he makes it back to Stiles, he's exactly where he left him—right in the center of the couch, plus more crumpled wads of tissues keeping him company. Peter walks in right in the middle of a truly monstrous sneeze, the sound loud enough to shake the ground and encourage tectonic plates to start shifting, and nearly walks straight back out. For the first time in his life, Peter feels like an under-qualified soldier marching onto a battlefield he isn't familiar with, and he can't stand it. He likes being a master at things, not a bumbling rookie. What does he even know about coughs and runny noses and sore throats? Too little.

Then again, he can hear Stiles sniffling and bubbling and oozing on the other side of the door, and he has to start somewhere. This isn't going to be Stiles' last cold Peter's going to be around for. Unless he turns him, which at the moment, is starting to have more and more advantages.

"Did you get the right NyQuil?" Stiles asks the second Peter steps inside and locks the door behind him. How can someone sound so nasally stuffed and so demanding in the same breath? "Give it to me."

"I checked with more than three verifiable sources while I was out, including Amazon Reviews," Peter says, setting his second load of bags down, "and surmised that NyQuil was not your best choice."

"Are you fucking kidding me!" Stiles cries, twisting around the back of the couch and hurling a pillow at Peter's head with a surprising amount of accurate aim. "I need my fucking NyQuil! This isn't the time to play doctor and try and prescribe whatever the hell you want for me. I need it!"

Peter kicks the pillow aside. "I have alternate products for you that should work better."

"I'm going to kill you," Stiles promises, which would probably sound a lot more threatening if his every syllable wasn't drenched in bacteria.

"Start with this," Peter says, pushing a fruit smoothie into Stiles' hand. "Chock full of vitamins, proteins, and all the nutrients you need to spruce you back up."

"I have a _cold_ , not scurvy."

"And after that," Peter says, wondering if he should've grabbed earplugs for himself while he was at the store today. "We'll switch to elderflower tea, which will help with congestion. And in between that, I have cough drops and nasal spray to ease the way."

Stiles doesn't seem all too impressed with Peter or the products he's peddling, which Peter does his best not to take personally. He spent a good amount of time asking the Internet for its expertise as well as every employee he could find with relevant opinions on how to bust a cold, but now doesn't seem to be the best time to tell Stiles this and boast about his thoroughness and detail-oriented problem solving. Maybe later.

"Drink," Peter orders, pointing at the juice smoothie in Stiles' hand that he's currently critically reading the label of. "Now."

"I can't believe you're motherhenning me," Stiles says around the straw after he gives in. "You're worse than my dad. You're _coddling_ me."

"I'm supervising the appropriate amount," Peter says. "Less talking. More drinking."

Stiles glares all the while he chews on his straw, but Peter sees his throat moving as he swallows down a good portion of the cup, which at least means he won't have to force feed him vitamins like a child. That's a plus. Peter turns around to continue emptying out the bag, pulling out a fresh tub of VapoRub and working on pulling off the plastic seal.

"Take your shirt off," Peter tells him, to which Stiles grumbles.

"Not now," he says, setting the cup aside. "Does your libido know no bounds?"

“Not that.” Peter sticks the VapoRub in his face until he gets the point. "Shirt off," he says again. "That's quite the big head you've got there, isn't it?"

"You rubbed off on me," Stiles says, but proceeds to peel off his multiple layers of blankets and throws and finally, his shirt. "Hurry up. I'm getting cold."

Peter dips his fingers into the cream and hopes—not out loud, for christ’s sake—that he’s doing this correctly. He’s completely out of his depth when it comes to things like Human Ailments. He’s never had to deal with them; how the hell is he supposed to know how much VapoRub to slather on someone’s body? Is it to be used generously, like stripper’s body oil, or sparsely, like a body butter that feels greasy if you rub in too much? The closest Peter’s come to doing something like this is oiling a turkey last Thanksgiving, and that doesn’t feel like it really applies.

“You know what you’re doing, don’t you?” Stiles asks.

“Of course,” Peter says immediately, because something about Stiles in this short-tempered, aggravated, congested state feels as if he’ll latch onto any weakness Peter shows like an octopus looking to strangle prey. It’d be impressive if it wasn’t so damn annoying.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Stiles says after thirty seconds of Peter working it onto his chest, swatting him away. “I’ll do it myself.”

“You're doing it exactly as I was." Peter crosses his arms, watching as Stiles takes over. "You should really be thankful. Most people wouldn't be able to be around you like this without getting sick too."

"You mean except for everybody in my life?" Stiles replies. “I’m surrounded by werewolves. People who can heal gunshots to the chest. People who have never even experienced allergies in their sorry little lives.”

“You sound a tad bitter,” Peter comments.

“I’m not. I’m _sick_ ,” Stiles says, twisting the lid back onto the VapoRub and handing it back to Peter. “Are you gonna make me soup? My dad always made me soup when I was sick.”

Then maybe he should show up here and deal with your sunny disposition, Peter can’t help but think, and manages the kind of forced smile he sees waitresses hand out after a ten-hour shift. “I’ll make some soup.” 

\--

Peter remembers how they started out just fucking. Peter had wanted to for a while—how exactly could he _not_ with Stiles walking around with a mouth like that—and then one day, he realized Stiles did too. Things got blurry after that—a lot of boxers on Peter’s apartment floor that weren’t his, miles of exposed skin, and Stiles’ mouth perpetually swollen from Peter’s teeth—but eventually, things got back into focus. Specifically, one exact moment when Peter found Stiles sleeping, sexed out on Peter’s couch, and he put a throw over him like a concerned father. The realization that they had transitioned into something a bit more multi-faceted than just booty calls and quickies was like a brick to the head, but Peter didn’t say anything to Stiles about it. They didn’t need to _talk_ about it. If it was going to happen—well. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Things did happen. It was all a very slow evolutionary process, but they did. They started hanging out with clothes. They began eating meals together. Stiles assigned himself an obnoxious ringtone in Peter’s phone.

And now he’s here making him soup while Stiles loudly demands for it to be finished faster. Maybe he should’ve jumped ship at the first sign of real feelings.

He keeps Stiles occupied on the sofa while he chops up vegetables in the kitchen. Even silent, Stiles is grating on his nerves with the way he's flicking through channel after channel, only allotting each program about a second's worth of airtime before cruising onward. Nobody can tell a thing about a TV show in one second. Not a single thing can be ascertained by a cast or a soundtrack or the quality of lighting in one second. If Peter weren't such an astonishingly good person, he'd leave right now—or, alternatively, right after tossing the TV remote out the window.

"Nothing good is on," Stiles moans.

"How can you tell," Peter grits out, enunciating each syllable with a chop of the knife. "You didn't exactly linger on the channels very long."

"Don't need to."

Stiles keeps switching, keeps switching, keeps switching, until he finally lands on Bobby Flay making brunch on an outdoor grill. Peter is going to stab himself with the knife in his hands. Why Bobby Flay of all things? When are his three thousand hours of mediocre fame going to end? 

"Who eats chicken for brunch?" Stiles says, pointing the remote at the TV where Bobby is talking about how to properly cut into a roasted chicken. “Who the hell is going to put that much effort into _brunch_?”

“Do you want to take a nap?” Peter cuts in, calmly placing the knife down. That, or he’ll have to start looking to see if Stiles has any duct tape handy to silence all that bellyaching. “It would help.”

“Naps are for kids.”

“You are a kid.”

It was clearly the wrong thing to say. Stiles draws himself up to his tallest height and says, petulantly, “I’m not. I’m grown up. Why do you always have to be so damn infuriating?”

"There's nothing wrong with a nice nap," Peter tries to convince Stiles, aiming for persuasive but instead ending up somewhere between demanding and exasperated. "I don't have to read you a bedtime story if you're so grown up."

“I’m staying up,” Stiles insists, much like a kid would, but Peter refrains from pointing that out. “I’m not tired. I’m _hungry_.” 

He shoots Peter a look like Bobby Flay would never take this long to prepare soup, and Peter feels the edges of his patience start to unravel.

“I’m working on it,” he says. He’s not a basic chicken noodle soup kind of chef, he’s a gourmet vegetable stew connoisseur with an appreciation for a good carrot. It takes a little bit of finessing, which is worth the end result, and if Stiles waited just a few more minutes, he’d agree. “You’ll be fed soon enough.”

“My dad used to break up angel hair pasta and put it into soup,” he says. “Are you doing that?”

Of course he isn’t doing that. He’s just now hearing about this, and it also sounds a little bit barbaric to throw pasta into his well-crafted soup willy-nilly, but Stiles is throwing him a look from the sofa that seems to order it be done this way rather than request it.

“Fine,” Peter says. “I’ll add them.”

“You have to break them first,” Stiles says. “Two inch long pieces.”

“ _Fine_.” Peter can’t believe he’s letting himself be bullied into butchering his soup like this. What next? Stiles demands Peter to also throw in vodka, because hey, his grandfather always used to spice up food with some hard liquor? “Anything else?”

“Yeah. I’ll take that elderflower tea now, thanks,” Stiles says, turning back to the TV and turning up the volume to better hear Bobby Flay’s ridiculous tips on marinating a chicken.

\--

Stiles, amazingly enough, is not someone who is usually germ-prone, not nearly as much as he is accident-prone, injury-prone, and klutziness-prone. That, Peter is used to. Stiles is just the kind of person who tends to trip over himself a lot and thirty minutes later, ends up clutching a bloody dish towel to various limbs while Peter yells at the receptionist about exactly how emergency-oriented the emergency room really is.

The last time Stiles ended up in the hospital went like this:

Stiles was performing an ill-advised striptease in Peter’s bedroom to the tune of Madonna’s Like a Virgin when he fell over his own pants and hit the floor nose-first, remerging with a loud curse and blood all over his face. The night ended with a doctor realigning his nose while Stiles, when questioned, firmly said that the injury occurred thanks to an unfortunately placed shoe on the ground he had fallen over and Peter snorted in the background, poking his way through doctor’s magazines in the corner.

The last time Stiles ended up in a hospital for longer than three hours went like this:

It was a perfectly pleasant fall day. Peter got a call around three p.m. from Scott, who was calling to let Peter know that Stiles injured himself playing lacrosse with him and Isaac in a park across town. Later, Scott would say that Peter had hung up too soon to hear the full extent of Stiles’ injuries. Peter would say that Scott had over-exaggerated.

Needless to say, Peter didn’t waste time. It didn’t matter what he was doing, what mattered was getting from point a to point b as quickly as possible, point b being wherever Stiles was presumably in traction. He spent the car ride speeding while muttering to himself to never get involved with a clumsy, lanky, butterfingered, blundering boy with a tendency to end up hospitalized ever again. It was murder on his stress levels, which in turn, was murder on his wrinkles.

He bullied three nurses into letting him access Stiles’ room once he arrived at the hospital, at which point he was close to wolfing out and heaving with the rage that was coming forth alongside images of Stiles heavily bandaged, deformed, or bleeding out in the hospital morgue. It was his fault, really, or maybe it was Scott’s fault, or Isaac’s fault, as they were with Stiles when he nearly died and had done nothing to save him from his own stupidity. Stiles shouldn’t be playing sports anyway; he was no good at them.

When he found Stiles’ room, he saw him very much alive, drinking a juice box, and laughing with the nurse who was wrapping his sprained ankle.

“You’re kidding me,” Peter said, seething with fury. “A sprained ankle?”

“What are you even doing here?”

“Scott told me you were—you were.” Scott had never said anything about death, but that was what happens when you weren’t specific, now wasn’t it? The mind wandered to dark places. “I expected much worse.”

Stiles threw his arms into the air. “I’m fine. I just get crutches for a week.”

“I can’t believe this,” Peter said, winded and worked up with nowhere to put his now unnecessary rage, and left to get himself a cup of coffee from the hospital cafeteria.

The crazy thing was that this was what Peter was good at—broken bones and blood and twisted ankles. Those were simple. He could see the bruising, and he could see the blood, and he could see the problem, and they were all things he experienced himself before healing it back into place. Colds—those were different. Colds were like angry monsters that lurked within and oozed out of every orifice unseen, and Peter didn't even know what it was like to have them. His body killed bacteria long before it ever festered into anything more, so he never underwent the joys of a stuffed nose or a scratchy throat.

Looking back, the ankle had been easy. It healed quickly enough—for a few weeks Stiles hobbled around and leaned on everybody close enough to use as a crutch, and that was that. Now and again Peter would touch him on the leg and pull some of the dull pain away, and Stiles hardly even complained all the while. Peter frequently thought about how pleasantly low-maintenance the whole ordeal was, which ultimately, felt an awful lot like false advertising considering the complete attitude reversal that came with Stiles catching a sinus infection.

Now, things are a little bit harder.

"He's a nightmare," Peter hisses to Scott on the phone while he paces back and forth on the patio. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"I did," Scott tells him. " Are you with him right now?" He sounds surprised, like he fully expected Peter to bolt overseas until Stiles' sinuses cleared.

"I am," he says, approaching the window and peering through the slanted blinds where he can sneak a peek of Stiles still on the couch, the back of his head visible, looking deceivingly innocent. "I'm outside, trying to catch a moment to myself."

“Didn’t you get my text?”

“I did, but.” Peter stops himself, grinding his teeth. His mouth is simply not going to say the words _I thought I could handle it_ out loud. He’ll sound like a whiny little boy. “He’s a bit more of a, well. _Handful_ than I anticipated.”

“It’s just the first few days that are the hardest,” Scott says, which Peter realizes translates into at least seventy-two hours, which might as well be three years.

He doesn’t have time to complain. This has to be a quick call or Stiles is going to come marching out here demanding attention and asking why he’s hunkering around outside and why he isn’t spending his time finishing up that damn soup, so Peter has to hurry to the point. “Tell me what to do,” he says. “How do I defuse the situation?”

“Uh.”

“ _Anything_.”

“His mom used to sing to him to make him feel better. I know that much.”

“What did she sing?” Peter presses, because what he needs now are _specifics_. 

“Um. Frank Sinatra songs, I think.”

Peter looks back through the blinds just in time to see Stiles shifting on the couch, presumably to get up and loudly gripe about more things. Peter’s moment of peace has ended.

“Got to go,” he says, and stuffs his phone back into his pocket just as the patio door creaks open and Stiles’ curmudgeonly face peeks out.

“What are you doing?” Stiles asks. His voice is starting to sound awfully like the croak of a dying frog’s, like the build-up has divided between his nose and his esophagus. “You’re supposed to be making me soup.”

“It’s simmering,” Peter says. "I'm letting it cook."

“Shouldn't you be making sure it doesn't burn?”

Peter takes a fair amount of offense to that. He's a seasoned cook, not a first time spatula-holder, and Stiles _knows_ this, for the love of god. He once made the two of them a garnished-to-perfection Baked Alaska, and not everybody can pull off a Baked Alaska. He can handle a fucking vegetable soup.

He doesn't bring that up. Sick people are meant to be coddled, not argued with, even if Peter has been undeniably right today more times than he can count with his fingers. He follows Stiles back inside, pulling the lid off the soup pot to confirm what he already knows: everything is cooking away as it should be. Stiles doesn’t seem to trust his judgement, however, and crowds up to his side to take a look himself.

“Excuse me,” Peter says. “Elbow room.”

Stiles ignores him. He sticks his head in the pot as if he’s smelling it for cyanide, and doesn’t back away until something amid his overbearing cloak of blankets vibrates. Stiles reaches within the thousands of layers covering him and withdraws his phone, where Peter can see a text from Scott on the lock screen that says: _Heard you’ve been working Peter pretty hard today!_ Peter slides the lid back on the pot and discreetly keeps his eyes over Stiles’ shoulder, watching his thumbs type back: _Maybe I’m testing him just a lil. I’m sick and it’s fun._

And honestly, what the fuck? What is it that Stiles is testing him on? Cooking capabilities? Willingness to play the obliging butler? How long it’ll take before Peter leaps out the window and books himself a three-month cruise to Scandinavia?

“If there’s something you want to say to me,” Peter says, crossing his arms. “Go ahead.”

Stiles looks up from his phone at him. “All right,” he says. He puts his phone away and clear his wet, wheezing throat. “It’s your fault I’m suffering like this.”

“What?”

“You’re the one who insisted we go out even though I told you that rain was in the forecast.” Stiles matches Peter’s body language by crossing his arms as well. He looks like a shabby, woolen lump of indignation. “I got _soaked to the bone_ last night all because you needed an espresso. Was it worth it?”

“What in the world?” Peter says, feeling more and more like reality is spinning away from him. How can someone with such a leaky, swollen nose and bleary, red-rimmed eyes have so much authority? “How is your immune system’s inability to do its job my fault?”

“Well,” Stiles huffs. “ _Excuse me_. We can’t all be magical healing supernatural werewolves.”

He storms off after that, he and his ten million blankets dragging behind him. Peter’s usually the one to make dramatic exits, and Stiles is the one to awkwardly stumble his way out a door, so the fact that Stiles just managed a soap-opera-worthy departure that leaves Peter feeling, frankly, outperformed, is a little bit like someone’s just stolen an Oscar statue from him and clocked him over the head with it.

\--

The last time Stiles was in a hospital for longer than a day was the worst yet. It was a few months ago, right when he and Peter had taken a trip up north to a lodge in the mountains, a trip intended to be romantic and relaxing and paint Peter as the epitome of a considerate, amorous, detail-oriented boyfriend with the budget to expense luxurious weekend getaways and eyes that smoldered when in candlelight. Stiles' appendix had other plans. It went like this:

After a feast of a dinner that began with salmon and good conversation and ended with chocolate mousse and feeling each other up under the tablecloth, Stiles started complaining about a persistent stomachache. Peter, the type of customer who was quick to point fingers and demand refunds, accused the restaurant's manager of serving diseased fish and questionable wine for a good half an hour, up until he was apologized to and promised the kitchen would undergo a thorough cleaning. He came back to their room only to discover it reeking of the stench of recently-flushed vomit.

"You threw up," Peter said suspiciously.

"I'm fine," Stiles said, dragging his sleeve over his mouth. He looked a little green in the face, which definitely seemed to bely his assurances, but Stiles didn't seem to be in a mood for pandering about his wellness. He was already shimmying his shirt off in what he probably thought was an irresistible twist of a dance, eyes hooded.

"Then why did you throw up? Did you drink too much?" Peter asked, still focusing on the retching. "I didn't see you get all that wasted, but perhaps that wine was stronger than we thought it would be."

"I'm a little tipsy," Stiles admitted. "But I’m more turned on than anything else.” He spun in a circle and threw his shirt into the corner, which brought back flashbacks of Stiles’ last striptease. Peter reached out to steady him, but Stiles twirled out of the touch, dancing along to a nonexistent beat.

“Stand still,” Peter told him. Even if he wasn’t currently reliving Stiles’ extremely bloody nose and complete inability to dance and disrobe himself simultaneously, that sicklish tinge to Stiles’ face was enough to convince him that Stiles shouldn’t be turning in circles and swaying his hips. “Are you going to throw up again?”

“I’m fine,” Stiles said, maneuvering Peter over to the bed. “I’m not going to throw up on your dick.”

“Your dirty talk could use some refining.”

“Come here, you sexy beast,” Stiles rumbled, pushing his way into Peter’s space and kissing him firmly on the mouth. It was a long kiss, the kind that managed to distract Peter from thinking about just how much of that questionable salmon Stiles had. “I want to suck you off.”

Peter sighed, slipping his hands into Stiles’ hair. “I suppose I could let you.”

"Of course you could. Now lay back." With the pushy, assertive attitude Stiles was notorious for after a few drinks, he shoved Peter onto the bed and sat between his legs, fiddling with the button of his pants. "When I'm through with you, mister..."

"Thrill me," Peter said, folding his arms behind his head, doing little more than lift his hips to accommodate Stiles pulling his pants off his legs. Stiles was always especially playful when tipsy, all about the cheesy thrusting and exaggerated winks and loud moans, and Peter could appreciate the humor of it all if nothing else.

He watched as Stiles eased him out of his boxers, humming Marvin Gaye while he did so, and briefly took the time to marvel at the fact that any of this was even happening. That he was on a romantic getaway in the mountains with a boy who was shooting him drunken provocative smiles and was a few seconds away from sucking him off. That his life somehow saw fit to award him with this, even after everything. It was the kind of thought someone had right before things took a bit of a nosedive.

Stiles dragged his tongue up Peter's cock, still grinning, and just as Peter wound his hand into Stiles' hair and continue to send wordless thanks up ahead for this, all of this, Stiles passed out.

The good news was that watching Stiles collapse between his legs was a very sobering sight, enough so that he didn't have to endure the embarrassment of slinging a hard-on through a hospital full of strangers. He called 911, demanded to sit in the back of the ambulance to keep suctioning pain out of Stiles' body, and didn't stop panicking until Stiles was out of surgery and was officially rid of the offending organ, which happened to be a burst appendix.

Sitting in that waiting room for hours was an astonishingly illuminating experience. It was different from the time Stiles sprained his ankle; everything had moved very fast then, too fast to really worry, but this time around he had eons to pass doing nothing but concern himself over Stiles. He hadn't been this worried about someone other than himself in a long time, the type of worry that manifested in white hands gripping armrests and feet tapping irritable rhythms on the tiled floor. The feet tapping was especially annoying; it was a habit that he seemed to have caught from Stiles after spending so much time together, and there it was again, that horrible thought that Stiles could die on that emergency operating table and not be able to spend any more time with Peter at all.

Rationally, he knew the solution: detach. Avoid Stiles for a bit. Let the connection to him fade, let that visceral need to protect and shield him whittle away until he'd be back to his unaffiliated self. He was used to that, not so much to caring so much about somebody you want to punch and wrestle and box your way through walls just to feel better about them feeling bad. Having a weakness like that was dangerous.

But he didn't leave. Some unearthly force kept him in that waiting room, glued to that chair, unwilling to go. And when the doctors told Peter that Stiles was all right and made it through the surgery, he still didn't leave. No muscle in his body had the capacity to leave, and that didn't change after seeing Stiles wrapped in scratchy hospital sheets, pale but laughing, licking pudding out of a cup while Peter held his hand hard enough to cut off circulation.

"Hey, be gentle with me," Stiles had said, trying to shake off his vice grip. "I'm a patient. I'm weak. I'm one organ down."

"An unnecessary organ," Peter said, refusing to let go. "Not to mention dangerous. You could've died."

Stiles looked at him, his smile fond. He reached out with his other hand and tried to affectionately pinch Peter's cheek, but the pulse monitor on his finger got in the way. "Were you worried about me?"

Peter looked at his dopey smile, pleasantly drugged and unfeeling of any pain, and absolutely refused to answer that. Stiles didn’t seem to need an answer, however, perfectly content making his own conjectures, and he squeezed Peter's hand as if to reassure him that his secret of caring enough about someone to stick around in a hospital for them was safe with him.

"You know, this reminds me of the time I ended up eating shellfish on accident when I was eating dinner with Scott and my dad when I was—I think seven. Seven years old," Stiles said, head leaning back against the pillows. "I ended up ordering something that had really tiny pieces of shrimp in it and nearly died right there in the restaurant. Okay, maybe not died, but I made a scene and had to be stabbed with an epi pen."

"You have a shellfish allergy?" Peter asked dryly. "Tell me, what else exactly is wrong with you?"

"Too much," Stiles said. "I have ADHD, horrible anxiety, some men in my family go bald _really_ young, oh, and—I have really bad taste in boyfriends."

"Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of spirit," Peter said. Stiles laughed at him and the sight of it was oddly soothing, like the Stiles Peter knew best, not the one who was swaddled in sterilized sheets and was in serious surgery less than an hour ago. He would be fine—Peter logically knew that—but it killed him to think about all the other things that could afflict Stiles that he had no control over.

"Hey," Stiles said, and from the look on his face, he seemed to be picking up on Peter's dark train of thought. "Are you okay?"

Peter's eyebrows snapped up. "Am _I_ okay?"

"Yeah. With the hospital and everything. I never know if—well." He fidgeted with the corner of his blanket, where the threads were coming loose and he could twirl them around his thumb. "If they bother you. Remind of your past, I guess."

It made Peter realize that during the entire time he was either storming the halls or pacing the waiting room or sitting by Stiles' bed, he hadn't even thought about his own memories with hospitals. It used to bother him, that much was true. Even just the smell of a sterile hallway would bring back an unpleasant tickle of remembering what it felt like to burn, to heal, to fight off the fire that wouldn't cool down, but today had been different. Peter had been too focused on Stiles being okay to even think about himself, and that was an aspect he had never even considered when he was too busy thinking about how hazardous it was to make serious connections with mortal, clumsy people: that being close to someone also made things hurt less. And maybe that made everything else worth it.

"It was fine," Peter said. "I was more concerned about you and your malfunctioning organs."

"Organ. Just one," Stiles clarified. He gave Peter's hand a squeeze. "Hey. Sorry I ruined our trip."

"You don't have to apologize," Peter said. "You did, but you still don't need to say you're sorry. It's not like you planned it."

"My plans would've been skinny dipping with you in the lake behind the lodge, and then getting frisky in the hot tub. Maybe some champagne too. Then watching Friends reruns in that big bed."

"It was quite the big bed."

"I know," Stiles said. He squeezed Peter's hand again. "Thanks for being here instead of back at the lodge enjoying it."

"You honestly think any part of me wants to be there right now?" Even just the thought of it made Peter sick to his stomach. He had felt practically glued to that chair in the waiting room earlier, unable to move until he knew for sure that Stiles was fine, Stiles was _safe_.

" _Really_ huge bed," Stiles mumbled.

"This was a _couple's retreat_. The name explains that it requires two people."

"I know, but." Stiles grabbed their joined hands with his free one. "Even if you disagree, I know that the you from a few years ago wouldn't have cared." It sounded a bit like an insult, but the appreciative, wowed way Stiles was looking at him was too distracting for him to focus on that. "It was really scary fading in and out in that ambulance. I'm glad you were there."

"Me too," Peter said, and meant it.

\-- 

Stiles ends up taking a nap after he marches off in a huff. Not without grumbling, but he does. His eyes start drooping and his channel switching gets lazier and Peter swoops in to grab the opportunity of Stiles' growing exhaustion by the horns just in time to convince him to relocate to his bed. The entire time he talks of being fine and awake and very much interested in the episode of Ghost Adventures he was watching in the living room a second ago, but then Peter swaddles him in his sheets and he quiets. For a good hour and a half. 

Peter had been hoping for a five, maybe six hour nap, but he isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He takes his time cutting up chicken meat and sprinkling spices into the broth and generally perfecting his gourmet masterpiece of a soup in Stiles-free peace, right after he's done changing the channel to the Home Shopping Network the second Stiles is tucked in. Then, he gets so busy finishing up the soup and watching the steamer being sold on TV whisk wrinkles out of even the most stubborn clothes that he completely misses the sounds of Stiles’ heartbeat waking back up, and he’s rather surprised by Stiles' presence in the doorway a little bit later, his eyes still slightly hooded with tiredness and his two dozen blankets draped over his shoulder again.

“You’re up,” Peter says.

“I smelled chicken,” Stiles says. His complete lack of a greeting lets Peter know that he might be awake, but he probably isn’t in a better mood. “I wasn’t sure if you were making a sacrifice down here.”

“As I so frequently do.”

“You never know,” Stiles says darkly. He settles into a chair at the kitchen counter and adds, “Especially with someone like you.”

“That’s a lot of lip for someone I made soup for,” Peter murmurs, stirring the pot’s vegetables around. “But I’ll let it slide because you’re sick.”

“How kind of you.”

Peter has to admit, he’s annoyingly impressed with all of this sass Stiles is bringing to the table. He usually matches Peter’s level of sarcasm without a blink, but with all those extra bacteria, he might even be a little bit sharper. It’s almost unfair.

He grabs a bowl from the cupboard and ladles soup into it. The aroma itself is appetizing, but the perfectly crafted ratio of broth to noodles to chicken to vegetables makes this a true masterpiece, and Peter would bring that up if he wasn’t sure that Stiles’ cheddar sharp cheek would find a way to slap that comment down. Instead, he presents Stiles with his meal without a word.

Stiles pulls it closer over the counter. He holds the bowl of soup up to his nose like an oxygen mask and takes in a slow breath. Then he carefully dips his spoon in and tries a mouthful of broth and carrots.

"And?"

This is like being a contestant on Chopped. How did Peter’s life come to this.

"And it's actually really good," Stiles mumbles. He digs the spoon back in, sipping more into his mouth. "I like it."

"Wonderful," Peter says, and transitions from gourmet chef into bossy parent in an instant. "Now eat it all. It'll help your throat."

“What do you know? You’ve never even had a cold.” 

“Just eat it.”

Thank god Stiles doesn’t get sick very often. An allergy there, a few sneezes here, a self-inflicted bruise on the head from tripping over himself there that ended in a crushing migraine, but nothing that ever sticks around long enough for Peter to see the effects on Stiles’ personality. Now he's getting a wonderful view of exactly how warped a usually level-headed, friendly boy's behavior can become thanks to a few germs, and he’s no longer taking Stiles’ usual self for granted. He watches as Stiles swallows back mouthful after mouthful, marveling at the fact that Stiles didn’t demand to be fed by Peter spoon by spoon.

He finishes the entire pot of soup at Peter’s insistence. Halfway through, he calls Peter a bully who’s force-feeding him broth like a pushy grandmother who’s harkening back to her days working the hospital tent during a world war, but by the time he reaches the last few spoonfuls, he looks significantly less green around the cheeks and seems to have improved.

“See?” Peter says, grabbing the empty pot and rinsing it out in the sink. “I was right. Eating it all helped.”

“I’m going back to the couch,” Stiles says, ignoring his bragging. “Get me a blanket.”

Peter watches him shuffle his way over to the sofa before pitching himself over the cushions, snuffling all the while. Peter doesn’t know if he ought to be impressed by Stiles’ no-nonsense, I-get-what-I-want attitude or annoyed that he’s obeying. Being ordered around isn’t something he’s really used to, but something about Stiles’ nasal barks to do this and get is oddly persuasive. He dumps the pot in the sink and grabs the sheets off of Stiles’ bed, dragging them over to the couch.

“Too heavy,” Stiles moans when he sees them. “I’ll overheat.”

“Jesus Christ,” Peter says, and puts the sheets back.

He cycles through three more blankets he finds in the storage closet before Stiles finally accepts one of them, the winner being an old quilt with truly hideous embroidery that looks like the work of a long departed grandparent. Peter drapes it over Stiles, watching him pull it around himself. 

"You know, I'm a little surprised you're here," Stiles says, tucking the blanket up to his neck.

"Why?"

"Come on. Me blowing my nose is not the kind of blowing you're usually interested in when I'm around," Stiles says, snorting. "This is not your style. Besides, most people hightail it for the hills when I start getting sick."

"Why is that?"

"Because I get grumpy? Because I turn into a little bitch? I don't know."

Peter smirks. "Those sound like direct quotes."

“I’m not telling you if they are,” Stiles says in a voice that makes it clear they are. “Seriously. Why are you here?”

He looks at Stiles, burritoed up in blankets with truly remarkable bedhead, and suddenly, it doesn’t feel like it’s about rising up to the challenge or proving himself to anybody. It feels like it’d be silly of him to be anywhere else.

"Do you remember right before we started sleeping together?" Peter asks. He combs his fingers through Stiles' hair, watching his eyes flutter slowly shut at the sensations.

"Mmm. Can you be more specific?"

"Right before. That time when we were up against that shapeshifter and you got hurt?"

"Yeah. And you jumped in front me." Stiles peels open one eye. "Nobody expected you to do that."

"I didn't expect myself to do that."

"You took a swipe to the stomach for me," Stiles murmurs. He sounds sleepy, pleasantly so, comfortable in Peter's presence.

"Tell it like it is. I saved your life," Peter says. "Anyway. It was just like a reflex. My muscles said to step in front of you, so I did. It made me realize that you meant more to me than I knew. I wanted to keep you safe." He touches Stiles' forehead, feeling for heat. "I get that same urge when I see you like this."

Stiles sniffles. "It's just a cold."

"It doesn't matter."

Stiles smiles. Even puffy-cheeked and runny-nosed and snot-infested, he looks good, even content. Peter looks at him, swaddled in blankets and surrounded by tissues, and doesn't ever want to leave this couch. He wants to stay, watch Stiles sleep, see him improve, and there it is again, that same visceral pull to take care of something that matters to him. He spent a fair amount of time denying it, but it's undeniably true: he wants Stiles safe. It's the same primal pull that comes with protecting a pack, a family. A gem.

There's something pleasant in the air between them then, something that feels like drinking hot chocolate on a cold day. Peter strokes his hands through Stiles' hair again and thinks it's his body falling in love with Stiles that much more.

Stiles smirks. “You care about me.” The smirk grows. “You loooove me.”

Maybe he does. Maybe this is what love is, not clobbering someone over the head even when they push all your buttons and have green sludge climbing out of their noses.

Peter slides his thumb over the soft hair by Stiles’ ear. “I don’t like seeing you sick.”

“That’s sweet,” Stiles says. “Surprisingly so.” He smacks his lips, apparently displeased with the lingering aftertastes of the soup. “I want to suck on something.”

Peter raises an eyebrow.

“I was thinking a cough drop,” Stiles says. “But to be honest, I’m not against that idea either.”

Peter considers Stiles’ current amount of phlegm production and exactly how sexy it is to have someone have to switch between nose blowing, heaving coughs, and sucking you off. Still pretty sexy, but could definitely be sexier.

"Is your throat sore?" Peter asks, remembering what he's actually here to do, which happens to be nursing Stiles back to health, not accepting blowjobs from the sick and unwell and nasally stuffed. He reaches forward and touches Stiles' forehead. "You're awfully hot."

Stiles manages a feeble grin. He seems to have calmed considerably after filling his belly with something hot and hearty, which Peter takes as the blessing it clearly is. "Tell me something I don't know."

"A bath would do you well. The steam would help your sinuses, and hot water could help you sweat out your germs."

Stiles' grin vanishes after that. He squirms under the blanket. "I don't like the idea of sweating out anything."

"It'd be good for you."

Stiles frowns some more, but the strength of it fades as he seems to consider all the germs that must be building up on his skin underneath all those woolen layers. He sighs in defeat.

"Okay. Draw me a bath if you're so crazy about it." He sighs again, like all of this is so very sacrificial. "But don't make it too warm."

"Jesus Christ," Peter says, and goes to prepare a tub the way he would for a fussy infant.

\--

It took Stiles a while to recover from his appendicitis surgery, a recovery that was most probably aggravated by Stiles' refusal to sit still and rest.

Peter's almost positive that Stiles doesn't even remember him being there. He was heavily drugged to deal with the pain of being so extensively sutured up, and spent most of his time acting like a reckless fool who wouldn't stop laughing because of his meds, including but not limited to escaping the bed Peter had encased Stiles in and wandering about to cure both boredom and restlessness. Wandering might be too generous. _Stumbling_.

"You're going to rip your stomach open at this rate," Peter said upon finding him rooting around the fridge looking for snacks when he distinctly recalled ordering Stiles to _stay in bed_ just a few minutes ago. His attempt at grossing Stiles out into obedience with horror stories of tearing open his stitches wasn't going as well as he would've liked. "Why are you walking around? Why are you up?"

"I was thinking about making mac'n'cheese," Stiles said, head still stuck in the refrigerator. "What do you think?"

"No. For the love of god." Peter marched forward and pulled Stiles away from the fridge. "The doctor said you had to take it easy. Stay in bed. This is not staying in bed."

"I'll stay in bed," Stiles murmured, and then wrapped his fingers around the fabric of Peter's shirt, "if you come stay in bed with me."

Peter hated himself a little bit for being turned on by this. There was a boy writhing close to him with a lewd, somewhat dopey smile on his face; it would be impossible not to react, but giving into Stiles' attempts at seduction when he was fresh out of surgery was a line Peter was firm not to cross. If he focused his nose, he could smell the antiseptic on Stiles' stomach and the blood crusting under his bandage, all smells that shouldn't be intermingled with those of come and/or lube. He grabbed Stiles by the shoulders and steered him out of the kitchen.

"You're testing my patience," Peter grumbled.

“C’mon. It’ll be fun,” Stiles said. “Remember when you stopped by my place that one night when you had that dagger in your stomach?”

“It was not a dagger. It was a _knife_. Practically a butter knife, really.”

“And I didn’t even get mad at you for bleeding all over the sheets?” There was a goofy, drugged grin on his face that certainly wasn’t there the night it happened. At the time, he was nothing but thinned lips and worried eyes and ordering Peter to _stop moving so much, dammit_ , so it was nice to see him laugh about it now, even if he was doing so under the influence of heavy painkillers. Peter remembered the night well, how Stiles had fussed over him like a grandmother, how the pain hardly hurt anymore from laughing too much at his overbearing concern.

“I remember,” Peter said.

Stiles giggled as if sharing a naughty secret. “And I told you that if you let me clean you up, I’d give you a reward?”

Peter remembered that part too. He was restless after the knife came out, waiting for the gaping void in his gut to heal and feeling nothing but the emptiness for the longest time, desperate for the skin to web back together, and Stiles had insisted on using antiseptic even though Peter assured him it wasn’t necessary. It was more for Stiles’ own benefit than Peter’s, to ease his worry, and eventually, Peter relented and let Stiles tend to him with the first aid kit in the bathroom. He kept going on and on about infections and how you could never be too careful and how terrible that hole in Peter’s stomach looked, but Peter had hardly been listening, body too busy moving, shifting, twitching away from the dull stabs of pain.

And then Stiles had pushed his hips down and said, “If I blow you right now, will you stop being so damn uncooperative?”

Needless to say, the offer had been too good to ignore.

Suddenly, Stiles’ tongue was in Peter’s ear, wrenching him away from the memory and back to the loopy, injured, space cadet of a boy in his arms. He tugged him back over to his bed and pushed him onto the mattress, wondering if tying him to the bedpost to keep his surgery wounds still would be sensible or cruel.

“That was a fun night, wasn’t it?” Stiles murmured, reaching out to keep a hold on Peter’s wrist. “I hardly ever get to take care of you.”

“What?”

“It was nice. Not being the one needing care for a change.”

“I don’t mind,” Peter said, taking Stiles’ moment of complacency to drape the bedsheets over him. “Taking care of you, I mean.”

He wasn’t lying, which almost surprised him. He remembered how it had been when he was younger, how his mother was always telling him to consider other people more, to be more thoughtful, to be more attentive, and he had never seen the point. He considered himself, wasn’t that enough? Shouldn’t he be his own number one priority?

Now he was staring down at Stiles stretched out on a bed, and all that consumed his thoughts were things like staying on schedule with changing Stiles’ bandage and checking his incision for infection and perhaps setting up a few pet gates around the place just to keep Stiles confined to his room where he could relax the best and heal the fastest. He had no clue when that switch happened inside of himself, when he suddenly started considering Stiles something to fiercely protect, to watch over, to _consider_. He brushed his thumb down Stiles’ ear.

“If it makes you feel better,” he suggested. “I can always pretend to be dying with tuberculous and let you labor over me after you’ve healed.”

Stiles’ brow furrowed. “Tuberculous? A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Fine. Pneumonia?”

Stiles seemed to consider it. “Okay. But you better be good at pretending,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll just feel silly.”

“I’ll try my best.”

Peter watched over him until he finally fell asleep, realizing—not even for the first time—how much he meant what he said about not minding taking care of Stiles. He had felt it back when he sprained his ankle, and again in the hospital when he was in surgery, and now more than ever with Stiles back at home but still fragile, still in need of protection. Stiles always went on about patterns, how you could only rule something out as a coincidence so many times. Peter didn’t think this could count as a series of coincidences anymore. He cared about Stiles, and he wanted him safe, and that was that.

\--

Stiles ends up pushing Peter out of the bathroom before he can actually get to business running him a bath, insistent that Peter doesn’t know what temperature is comfortable and soothing and blah blah blah. Peter leaves, but after five minutes of hearing water rush nonstop, Peter starts getting slightly suspicious that Stiles has fallen asleep in the bathtub to drown in a combination of the water and his own snot, and decides to prevent any incidents before they happen by checking up on him.

He raps his knuckles on the door and opens it a sliver. “Are you alive?” he asks.

Stiles yanks the door open the rest of the way. “I can bathe myself. I’m not a toddler,” he says.

“The water was running for a very long time.”

Stiles averts his eyes, suddenly finding the towel rack fascinating. “I may have forgotten to put the plug in for the first five minutes.” He proceeds to try and push Peter back out the door, but with his human strength already no match for him, his weak, bogged-down-with-germs strength is borderline sad. “It’s fine now. You can go.”

Peter doesn’t go. He stays by the doorway, watching as Stiles turns around and twists the tap back off, the gurgling sounds of his nose amplified in the tiny bathroom. He takes off his clothes, and as it turns out, Stiles’ body is still the svelte, lithe, pale wonderland Peter remembers it to be underneath all those deceptive layers of chunky throws and old pajamas.

And he really should turn around and go now, because as much as an insatiable horndog Stiles has proven himself to be, Peter highly doubts he’s currently in the mood for sex, which is exactly what Peter can’t stop thinking about when he sees Stiles all nude and slender, ready for the taking.

“You’re watching me from the door like a pervert, aren’t you?” Stiles asks, dipping his foot into the tub.

Peter tuts. “Hardly perverted when I’m allowed to see you naked.”

Stiles looks over his shoulder. "You sound pretty smug."

"Of course I am. Being permitted to see this sort of sight—well. It's definitely smug-worthy."

Stiles lets out of a huff of laughter like he's disbelieving of the idea, which only makes Peter want to climb into the tub with him, clothes and all, and show Stiles just how _wild_ his naked body makes him. Hell, a few orgasms might even be good for a worn-out body in need of relaxing. Maybe it's worth experimenting with the idea.

"Stop looking at me like that," Stiles says, submerging himself under the water until the line of it reaches his collarbones. The sight of it—Stiles stretched out underneath clear, swaying water, kneecaps sticking out—isn't too familiar to Peter. Stiles is the type to go for a quick shower and rush his way through, not soak in a luxurious bath, but maybe they ought to start taking more baths together. Buy some bottles of bubbles and spend an entire evening sitting in a hot tub rubbing loofahs over each other's shoulders and indulging in slow handjobs.

"Like what?"

"Like you're eating me with your eyes."

Peter smirks. "Forgive me," he says. "I was just thinking about how much I'd like to join you and jerk you off in the water."

Stiles' fingers twitch where they're settled on his knees. "You're not forgiven," he says. "You can't say stuff like that to me when I'm like this. I couldn't feel less sexy."

"Oh, you're always sexy," Peter tells him.

Stiles looks at him. The leakage around his nose seems to have slowed down—after all that blowing his nose while he was eating the soup, it better have—and the bath already seems to be relaxing him, but there's a worn, pasty look to his skin and the spots under his eyes that makes it clear he's still unwell.

"Really?" Stiles asks. "Now included?"

" _Always_ ," Peter insists. "You can't imagine how much restraint it's taking right now for me not to get closer."

Stiles shifts his legs under the water, seemingly considering Peter's words. "What would you do then?"

Peter sees the flicker of begging in Stiles' eyes, the way he's clearly responding to Peter's words. He smirks. "I'd get you nice and clean. Soap you down and rub your skin until I've massaged you into relaxation."

Stiles is quiet for a few seconds. Then he holds up a washcloth.

"Come on."

Peter doesn't need the invitation to be repeated. He comes closer and sits by the tub, grabbing the washcloth and squeezing the excess water away. He runs it up and down Stiles' back, across his shoulders, around the knobs of his spine, over the nape of his neck. Stiles arches over and lets Peter rub the warmth over his skin without complaint, which means Peter's finally found something that either actually appeases him, or he's fallen asleep right here in the bathtub. He proves the latter to be false by speaking up.

"So after this," Stiles says, "what comes then?"

Peter dips the cloth back into the water, saturating it in the heat before running it over Stiles' back again. He leans in close enough to press his lips against the dampness of Stiles' neck, and once again by his ear.

"I'd ask you to turn around," he says. "And I'd reach into the water and take hold of your cock and take my time stroking you. Continuing the massage."

Peter can hear Stiles swallow, the sound of it tempting at best. He loves how easy it is to rile Stiles up, how fond he is of listening to Peter whisper filth to him. He found out about this particular weakness of his when Stiles went on a road trip with Scott for the weekend of his birthday and one night in, Peter came home to a text message asking him what he was wearing, plus a lascivious winky face in case his intentions weren't clear. The evening had ended with Stiles calling Peter from the motel bathroom while Peter coaxed him to orgasm and listened to him beg on the other end of the line, which if nothing else, assured Peter that even distance wasn't an issue for their sex life.

"I'd let you come the first time like that, right there in the water, with my fist around you." He runs the washcloth up all the way to the hem of Stiles’ hair, watching the rivulets of water squeeze out of the fabric and go swimming down his back. "Get you nice and relaxed for round two."

Stiles' voice has a smile to it when he speaks again. "Round two?"

"Why not?" Peter murmurs. "I'd drain the water and bring you out to the bed, take my time licking you clean. Get my mouth on that perfect little ass of yours."

His hand dips down, briefly deviating from the rhythmic circles he's rubbing into his backside and sliding down just far enough to feel the curve of Stiles' ass, the spot where his lower back slips into the pucker of his entrance. He feels Stiles shudder against him, hears the slow breath he lets out, and brings his hand back up and over the waterline.

"I'd spread you open and take good care of you," Peter murmurs, running the washcloth up Stiles' sides and pressing in just enough to feel when his ribs pull in for an inhale. He's starting to get a little worked up himself by now thanks to the strength of his own storytelling. "Tease you, bite you, slowly take you apart. Leave you pleading for more. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Peter."

"—yes?"

Stiles looks a little bit sheepish as he glances over his shoulder and says, "Can you make me some tea?"

Well. He definitely expected that request to take a different turn.

"That—that's what you want?"

"Yeah," Stiles says. "What you're talking about sounds nice too."

"Clearly not nice enough."

"My throat hurts like a bitch," Stiles explains, rubbing a soapy hand at his jugular. "Some chamomile would be nice."

It's Peter's own fault, really. He shouldn't be getting himself all worked up like this when he should be concentrating on the fact that Stiles is still about two weeks away from being able to properly breathe through his nose again. He puts the washcloth over the tub's rim and dries his hands off on his pants.

"All right," he says. "You finish up in here. I'll be back."

"Thanks."

He has the decency to look apologetic as Peter leaves him in the steamy water, feeling a bit steamed in the downstairs region himself. He’s really to blame here; he shouldn't have underestimated the power of his sexual imagination.

He feels a little bad about it as he pulls the kettle out of the kitchen cupboard and fills it up. He shouldn't be focusing on sex right now, even if it is Stiles-centered sex. He googled this earlier; most people feel profoundly unaroused during colds and flus, and he should've remembered that. Never in a million years would he have thought that being born a werewolf was a disadvantage, but it definitely has made clear that there are certain things his partner goes through that Peter can never empathize with, or even fully understand. Runny noses. Headaches. Cancer scares and MRI scans. Long lines at the pharmacy and annual doctor visits. A part of him actually wishes he could, at least up until he remembers that being a werewolf means being able to immediately heal paper cuts away.

All he really knows is that Stiles is currently feeling clogged up, slimy, exhausted, and sore everywhere under the skin, and so the least he can do is stop complaining about Stiles' high-maintenance germ-induced needs. He watches the kettle, wondering if he ought to bring Stiles into the twenty-first century and buy him an electric water heater, and decides to try and be a little more considerate for the remainder of Stiles' cold. He may have to take frequent breathers outside to call Derek and vent, but he'll try.

The kettle whistles right as Peter is neck-deep in the cupboard looking for tea bags. He settles on a mug that says MORNINGS BLOW on the front, half-expecting a salacious image of a blowjob on the other side that instead turns out to be benign clipart of a whale’s blowhole, and tops it off with hot water.

He stirs the teabag around for a few minutes, listening to Stiles pull the bathtub plug and the pipes drain while he does so. He waits until the water is a pleasantly soft yellow and then dumps the teabag in the trash, foregoing Stiles’ usual heaps of sugar and heading over to the bathroom. He tips the door open, expecting to see Stiles climbing out of the tub with a towel wrapped low on his hips, and instead finding the room empty.

"Stiles," Peter calls out, readjusting his grip on the steaming mug of tea in his hand. Stiles’ towel is on the ground in a crumpled heap. "Stiles, you better not be running around and exerting yourself."

He shuts the bathroom door and checks the kitchen, then under the pile of approved blankets on the living room sofa, the closets, and finally in the bedroom.

Stiles is there, completely asleep on top of the sheets. His mouth is open and his boxers are all he seems to have had the energy to put on, his hair towel still twisted around his head. He looks to be perfectly content curled up on the bed snoring like a rhinoceros, and something about it all plucks at Peter's heart strings. Maybe it's how domestic the entire day has been, or maybe it's because he's experiencing the warmth of knowing that he didn't bail out on making sure Stiles was okay today, no matter how irritating he and his nasal voice were. He sets the mug down and wrangles the comforter out from underneath Stiles, pulling it over him. The movement seems to disturb Stiles into waking up for a bleary moment.

"Hi," Stiles says when his eyes blink open and he focuses on Peter's face. "Did I fall asleep?"

"Go ahead and continue," Peter says, patting the sheets down over his chest. "You need it."

"No. No, I'm fine," Stiles says, but his eyelids are already sliding shut again. "Ugh. Didn’t I tell you that the NyQuil would knock me out?" He tries to sit up. “I feel much better.”

"Well, you _look_ terrible," Peter tells him, climbing onto the bed. He goes to scoot closer, but Stiles puts his palms on his shoulders to keep him at a distance.

"No. I'll get you sick," he protests.

"I'm a werewolf," Peter reminds him.

"Oh. Right." Groggily at best, Stiles asks, "How's that going for you?"

"You need more sleep," Peter decides, pulling Stiles to his chest and tugging the crooked hair towel off his head. He drops it to the ground and slides closer to the center of the bed. "Come here."

Stiles comes without pause, curling into Peter's shoulder and tucking the blanket over Peter's lap so they're sharing. Peter doesn’t need the heat, but something about the gesture resonates with him. He doesn’t remember the last time someone snuggled under a throw with him, or shared their coat, or wanted to sit under a blanket and watch bad daytime TV with him. It’s nice.

"I really should stay up," Stiles mumbles, his words almost unintelligible.

"You don't have to," Peter says. He hums a few bars of It Had To Be You, slow and soft, and immediately, Stiles is lifting his head and looking at him.

"Where'd that come from?" he asks.

“I heard that Frank Sinatra calms you,” Peter says.

“It does,” Stiles agrees. Underneath all that exhaustion, he looks awed, like it’s occurring to him that Peter has gone to pretty far lengths to accommodate him, to figure out what he needs when he’s sick. “Keep going.”

He tucks himself back into Peter’s side. His hair is still wet, soaking Peter’s cheek, but Peter doesn’t think about moving away. He switches over to You Make Me Feel So Young, humming it from deep in his throat.

Stiles breathes out hot, ragged exhales on Peter’s neck, slings an arm around his middle, and Peter lets himself fall asleep as Stiles does.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Frank Sinatra's More Than You Know.


End file.
